When Insanity Bites

If you’re a writer, or really an artist of any kind, you might have been askew from the world in general for a long time. At least if you’re a writer or an artist worth his/her salt. Because being creative requires standing apart from the ape band and saying “okay, you do it that way, I do it this way.”

There are gradations in creativity, and the most creative people are … odd. The idea of the eccentric artist arose because well, it’s so often true.

With writers, there is something else that adds to the mix. We spend too much time in our own heads, in our imaginary worlds. While there are extrovert writers, even they seem to get lost inside their heads after a while.

This is why it’s important for writers to have friends they see regularly, and to go outside every once in a while to make sure that the rest of the world is still there, and not inside their heads.

What I didn’t know, until we conducted the current, unfortunate experiment was that the oddness of writers increasing when they don’t socialize is something that happens to everyone. We’re seeing it in grocery stores and parking lots, in online conversations with people who at least up till now faked normal perfectly, in domestic disputes (fortunately not in our family…. yet) and in neighbors doing really …. strange things to their yard (not us. Son told me I can’t build a cement dragon eating its tail around the base of our tallest tree. SIGH. Kids!)

Unfortunately these people have power over us, and seem to think we’re going to take their nonsense forever.

But here’s the thing… Americans are slow to anger. Very slow to anger. It is part of the same character that means we obey authorities in a legitimate emergency, by and large.

Remember when power went out in NYC (and most of the East) and everyone expected riots? Instead, people walked home. Also why everyone behaved admirably after 9/11.

However we do lose patience. Particularly when it becomes obvious that there is no legitimate emergency and that we are just being locked down to serve some agenda, like, oh, the Green New Deal. (To be fair, I think they expect to show us how much better we are when we’re not polluting, because, yes, they’re completely insane and understand nothing of the world.)

At some point during the Russia Boondoggle, while I was ranting at son that the left had gone insane, he said “Yes. Trump drove them crazy and now they’re crazy.”

This probably covers a whole lot of it, combined with their fragile ego, which must hold on to the idea they’re great, wonderful, infallible. This is threatened by the fact most of them don’t agree with us. Not being very psychologically developed — or stable — they now hate us for not confirming their ideas of self. They hate reality for not conforming to their dreams. And they want to destroy both Americans and American reality.

Take that article linked above. Dr. Fauci knows very well this virus is not a big deal. All of you — ALL OF YOU — who got very upset when we said “it’s a flu” need to get a grip. Even FAUCI the prophet of forever locked up doom, KNOWS “It’s just the flu.”

But perhaps your unaware that on March 26, Dr. Fauci himself said in the New England Journal of Medicine that “the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%).”

Keep in mind, he can say that and simultaneously want to keep us locked up for a year to a year and a half, or until we find the vaccine:

Last Thursday, the scientific mastermind behind the economic carnage and spirit-crushing isolation now constituting the two main pillars of America’s ingenious new public health strategy delivered some bad news. Dr. Fauci says we’ll have to keep living like this until the virus is eradicated.

Look, he can’t be that stupid. NO ONE can, except maybe Occasional Cortex (but then she has to carry a reminder to exhale. And sometimes she forgets.) He knows what this would do. So why is he proposing it?

Well, a lot of doctors become enamored of eugenics. It’s a problem with their profession. Which is why they shouldn’t be in charge of anything.

The question is, why is Trump listening to them? Is he insane? Did they finally hit his weak spot (which appears to be his germophobia?) OR is he waiting for other countries to open and prove the mad doctor wrong?

While Austria and a couple of other countries are opening up, I don’t think we can afford to wait till Fauci is conclusively proven wrong.

America has been a thorn on the side of dictators the world wide and for the entirety of its existence. They finally have us where they want us. (No, I’m not including Trump in that… probably. Though he’s taking advantage of the lockdown and dem gloating to do a lot of things they’ve blocked him on before. To that extent, he too might want to prolong it and not be aware of how mad the rest of us are.)

They think they can lock us forever, not give us medical care, reduce the population and finally get their perfect communist neo feudalism, where they rule like Lords and Ladies over a populace grateful they’re even ALLOWED to get out of the house and work at all.

I’d caution them to figure out what lockdown is doing to Americans. We’re not all hysterical children glued to the TV and crying in fear of what Dr. Anthony Fauci admits is “just a flu.”

As Trump did to them, they’re driving us insane. Beware when we finally blow up. Beware our insanity has teeth. It bites.

Cheaper and FAR less troublesome than getting a dragon to pose just so AND getting a Gorgon to make a perfectly timed appearance. Even with those two… accomplishments, the.. attentions.. of the rest of the dragon community… well, ‘Bad Idea’ doesn’t BEGIN to cover it.

If you cast the dragon as segments, and leave room between for expansion of the tree trunk, and cast extra segments for when the trunk greatly embiggens, you could have your tail-eating dragon around your tree.

Cheaper easier version is paint segments on bricks or suitable garden/path edge stones.

There was a bit of a “panic” online locally yesterday as the local mayors announced in the AM that they were going to hold a joint press conference at 1PM regarding the increased infections they are seeing locally. The media was hyping it, and people were getting all upset that the mayors were going to institute a lockdown and start fining people for being out. Others were cheering that a lockdown was finally going to happen, because people in this state are out and about way too much.

Turned out to be a whole lot of nothing. The mayors just encouraged everyone to stay away from others as much as possible. And that, if infected and still going out they might start asking the police to cite those people for an infraction. Basically, the mayors and media made everyone freak out over reiterating exactly what the governor has been saying daily.

Governor Gavin here went on last night saying “Hey! Good news! The stats they are a-turnin! The curve is flattening! Fewer cases than we projected! But that just means by flattening the curve we made the peak come later, and our models say so you have to stay locked up longer!! Tune in tomorrow night for more good news!!!”

The _Texas Tribune_ the left of left-center paper in Austin, published an article with model curves for various TX cities, saying in essence is that the best thing is for everyone to stay locked indoors until at least August. And then cases start rising again in August.

Well duh!
Of course they do. For a certain demographic the worst thing about Covid19 is that it hit too early.
Every crisis must be exploited for maximum advantage to the cause and to reinforce the socialist narrative.
The usual suspects are still firmly fixed in their traditional mode of operation, ie wait for a Republican to perform less than perfectly, and that defined by blatant Monday morning quarterbacking, and use it to destroy them and seize more power for themselves.
We all need to remember and document the collective amnesia of the left and their media lackeys with the 180 degree switcheroo from “it’s no big deal, y’all are raciiiiiisssstttt” to OMG we’re all going to die unless we “temporarily” violate several of your Constitutional rights.

And I say this while maintaining Bill Whittle probably has the best analysis of this. And I say this while thinking although we’re at eleventy-seven instead of just taking the 1919 interventions, taking the 1919 interventions was reasonable and perhaps some of the eleventy-seven is a by-product not of more actions, but a very different society (specifically the much broader use of restaurants and daycares including public school as daycare).

But I’m well aware in certain quarters there is a combined desire to maintain the misery until it makes us vote Biden while saying not matter what we have done it was wrong…trust me, if we reopen and the economy takes a while to take off then the same people screaming “indoors until August” will scream Trump killed the economy by not encouraging people to go back out by Easter.

“wait for a Republican to perform less than perfectly… and use it to destroy them and seize more power for themselves.”

I noticed they’ve pulled the old “Trump owns stock in a hydroxychronoquil maker — he’s profiteering off the crisis!” trick.

Less than $1,000 stock in a company company which cannot sell their HXC in the United States — meaning his “tainted gains” would be significantly less than the presidential salary he donates to charity every paycheck.
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Perhaps the Texas Trib staff can work from home — it doesn’t seem likely their reporting consists of much beyond relaying Official Government Press Releases. It seems unlikely they are an ee-sential business, what with those releases being accessible on-line and any shoe-leather reporting being a violation of the shudder-in-place directives they so adore.

I wonder what they will do when a toilet gets blocked (as must surely happen routinely in their editorial offices, given how full of crap they seem to be) and the plumber tele-unstops it?
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I can’t stand Newsom. I’m in SoCal and used to listen to John and Ken on am 640 dunk on him constantly when he was mayor of San Francisco. And holy lord was he a terrible mayor. But that can’t stand in the way of someone who wears hair gel as well as he does from being governor!

I still think he’s a tossed aside Disney animatronic someone dug out of a warehouse and programmed to spout socialist catch phrases. His hair and eyes don’t pass the uncanny valley for me.

We do have an out of touch “aristocracy” who hold the commoners in contempt. We’re a bit short on radical middle class lawyers to rebel though since they’re the aristos and would be rebelling against themselves. Why don’t we just skip to Thermidor? The press has already done the 22 Prairial thing so It’d be revolutionary cosplay.

We’ll get Franco or Pinochet. Given the past few decades, probably Franco. The left is Europe has put any non-progressive dictators on notice that peacefully giving up power is a mug’s game. Men like that don’t gain their power being mugs.

Yep, look, I’m at two fault risk, age and medical issues. But my expectation is that by May first (and isn’t that a coincidence) lockdown restrictions will be reduced or in some locations ended entirely.
But here’s the thing, in spite of the risks I will assure you that if things are not back to some semblance of normal by June first I intent to go out, get the effing virus, get sick, then either die or get over it.
My patron saint, Robert of Heinlein, would expect no less of me.

Or you can take your Heartguard/horse deworming drench. Apple flavored!

I found a comment box somewhere, and somebody was worried about accidentally taking a horse-sized dose. One of the farmers said he’d been there, done that, and been okay. But what he’d learned was not to deworm his cows while cursing them out loud, mouth open…..

Another guy said that after he dewormed his horses, he stuck his pinky in the remains of the bottle and used that to deworm his dog.

I have managed, so far, to keep a reasonably even disposition (highly annoyed, but not hunting for the pitchfork).

I am very worried, though – $SPOUSE$ is normally the one restraining me – but less than a month and I am monitoring where she is at all times. It’s something like watching a video of a gun-type A-bomb in extremely slow motion.

I hate to say this, because it hurts, but the most terrified are women who have somehow become dependent on TV and think “everyone is scared, so it must be true.”
Women tend to try to fit in, but d*mn it, can’t they THINK?
Sigh.

We can but we chose not to. And by “we” I mean mankind, the rationalizing animal. Women just get away with it a LOT more. And to be fair, the non-Odds feel the social costs more keenly.

Though the Facebook & Instagram programming is a real phenomenon literally is designed to hook women (and feminine men) into consuming it via that same need to confirm and connect. It also uses a lot of gaming theory, and some truly twisted uses of targeted feeds to manipulate their emotions. It’s toxic.

It sounds over dramatic, but an awful lot of folks are walking around broken– they are at constant yellow, if not full on red. That’s the problem with the nasty social pressure/bullying/abuse that goes on as a matter of course in the modern social circles, aimed at anybody who isn’t conforming to the latest crazy.

Hell, I know about the feedback and attempt to cut off chunks to fit in and stuff– and I still very couple of days have to stop, and think, and breath, check the evidence and remind myself there is no reason to panic. 90% of the time, “it doesn’t WORK THAT WAY!!!”

But, then, I’m not keyed in to that support network, so it falling away doesn’t undermine, so much.

Aye. It took decades for ‘pat on the back’ to NOT be a sign of aggression needed and a good reason to look for a ‘KICK ME’ sign or some such. And I’m still a bit touchy about things, really. Just that there seems to be a slight improvement in maturity of those I encounter. Most of the time.

I don’t know that its women per se, as much as it is anyone who spends a lot of time on TV. Or news sites. I had to ban the Drudge Report at home. My medical advice for lots of people is TURN OFF THE NEWS!!!

Have you met.. “us”… this kind INVENTS force-multipliers.. FOR FUN.
And we play dirty. Or at least know how.
And, mind you, Ox slow.
There are those really scary good at all this nasty thinking* stuff, and they are SCARY.
Those that are not SCARY, are merely QUIET.

When this is done we’re going to have to retire all these politicians and officials. Since gathering signatures is impossible at the moment in many places that may mean write-in challenges will be needed. Rejecting neofeudalism is something we should all get behind since we’re all locked down in so many states anyway. It is safer than drinking our sorrows away…

The mayor down here encouraged people to wear masks, especially this week. Employees at businesses are – sometimes. Most other people? Nope. Between the warmer weather, the “flattening curves,” and other things, people are getting irked. When the city goes on TV every single day to explain that non-essential business do not have to close as long as they do X, Y, and Z, then you can tell that enough is getting to be enough. People are not going to wait for June, or even May.

I’d like to think that the POTUS is giving Dr. Fauci enough rope so that come the end of this month, the POTUS can lift restrictions and give Fauci a gold watch and nice retirement package as he goes out the door. And then the locks are changed. As is the combination to the executive men’s room.

More masks in Oregon, though our county tends to run older. Masks and gloves for the workers at the mail drop (and a steady stream of business; seems to be more people dropping off shipments and/or special mail.

The grocery store had a fair number of customers wearing masks, spread from the 20s through seniors. There were very few kids there this time. I saw a few (usually younger) women wearing gloves but no masks.

I see that the mayor of LA has decided to make mask wearing mandatory. He comes across as a petty tyrant trying to make it to the big leagues. I wonder if he’s familiar with Benito’s last day as Il Duce…

Grocery run yesterday here the the Glorious No Really Gavin I’m Going Nuts Here Dude Bear Flag Peoples Republic yielded most shoppers in masks, almost all staff in gloves only. The only shoppers with wild eyes above masks wearing gloves who constantly were whipping their head around to monitor social distance in all directions were younger and female.

Store had taped off helpful spacing labels for the checkout lines on the floor. Traffic overall was probably about normal for Tuesday afternoon in the spring.

Stockwise almost nothing was completely empty except for the Mac & Cheese section. They even had off-brand TP and paper towels. Staff said they are generally getting stuff in with some spotty deliveries due to things like ongoing driver shortages, and that their restocking orders are so huge suppliers are still stretching to fill them.

And as has been the case since the first time I shopped post-crazyweek, butcher counter was fully stocked, frozen food was full, and veggies were fully stocked as well.

During my “over 60” hour this morning, my usual store actually had Ramen! That has been missing for several weeks.

I thought up several new descriptive nouns for Honorable Madam Mayor Brown Vagina, though. Went into the store, headed straight for the TP shelves (we’re down to one week, one week less than my normal stock) – gentleman in front of me in a scooter grabbed the last package of 12 rolls.

Okay, I thought, I see some 4 roll packages down the aisle – I’ll skip four and just get two of those. Well, got to the self-check, and manager comes running over “One package only! No EXCEPTIONS!” Wasn’t going to fight with her there, so handed that one back to her and went on.

Well, there’s another store of the same chain just a mile down the street, on my way home. I stop there on my way back – they have only 12 packs. So…

Self-check there, the monitor asks me how I’m doing this morning. “Well, I’m annoyed.” Explain why. “We can’t do anything about that, it’s by order of the Mayor.” “What?” She goes over to that store manager, who had printed out the email they got with Brown Vagina’s signature. One package per household. Lose your retail license if you’re bad!

Yes, I ended up with two packages, for a total of 16 rolls, not 12. Since the order was properly enforced AS WRITTEN. For an added bonus, if I did have the virus, I exposed TWO sets of shoppers in the danger range to it. If I didn’t have it, I got a free extra spin at the Wheel of Fate!

Made a run down to the store today here in West Seattle. About half the people were wearing masks, about a tenth were wearing gloves. People not wearing skewed younger. None of the staff were wearing masks but a few were wearing gloves, like the woman who wiped down my shopping cart handle as I came in, and the guy stocking produce (but that would be normal).

The only thing I noticed was still gone was beans and rice, pasta, and baking supplies. Everything else was fully stocked, except I didn’t go down the toilet paper aisle since I have plenty stashed already. The cashier said you have to get there pretty early to get beans.

“Stand here” marks have been on the floor in front of the checkout aisles for a couple of weeks, but now they have plexiglas screens that are placed to protect the cashier — unless you stand in front of the card reader like everyone does, and then there’s nothing between you at all. [sigh]

The restaurant supply had a few 50 pound bags of rice, the least expensive brand was out, but this isn’t overly fancy (no, I will not buy Jasmine rice for normal usage). OTOH, beans were gone. Pintos were the first to disappear (produced in Washington; I don’t know if any of the lockdowns are affecting them), while in succeeding weeks, black and more exotic beans left. The last bags I saw in that section were dried corn kernels, most likely for making home-ground flour or meal.

My first experience with the plastic shield was at a minimart, though I’ve heard that they are now at the Kroger. I’ll see next week. The big independent grocery is putting more people at the cashier stations to reduce the backlog there. I’m still seeing the regular cashiers, so that’s a good sign.

$SPOUSE heard on the news that the LDS sent a couple full trailer loads of staples to the food banks; first to the one here east of the Cascades, then (after some griping) to the Medford area.

Security theater, take 2. At the grocery store yesterday, the clerk wore a mask and gloves. And took the time between every check out to thoroughly wipe down the entire check out counter, front and back. But never changed gloves and frequently touched his face whilst adjusting his mask. I think my eyeballs rolled all the way to the door – most unsanitary.

Murphy, gov of NJ just made masks inside stores mandatory. He’s also closed parks. Because why not close the only places where people can easily stay 6 ft apart while getting sunshine and exercise. They’re all morons of the first degree. And Fauci is now a professional bureaucrat who just happens to have MD after his name. He’s worse.

Oregon has closed the State Park beaches, with the claim that local hospitals don’t have the capacity to handle the surge of whuflu cases that would result if the tourists attracted by them showed up. If this epidemic comes a cropper and the unholy alliance of politicians and the news media can’t cover it up, Kate Brown(shirt) and the local pols who supported will get trashed at the poll

In the big 1970s New York City area blackout, there was a major problem with looting in the City. I know that was not much of an issue with the large regional blackout (that was in the 1990s if I recall correctly) but the 70s one; bad stuff. Most definitely NOT peaceful.

The amount of pressure on the nine states that aren’t under lock down is incredible. Living in one of those nine states, I was quite amused by comments from a senator (usually, I want to dropkick him into the nearest large body of water):

“But remember that people are spread out here [Wyoming]. We only have about five people per square mile. We have been socially distancing the entire 130 years that we have been a state,” Barrasso said.

I looked at the basis the group used to determine the grade. To get good grades, you have to a) not drive so much, and b) stop going to non-essential places, including department stores.

Granted, the people who launched the test are from Norway, but perhaps they should understand that when you live 40 miles from town, you aren’t going to get much trip reduction. (30 miles from home would get me to a park. Hard to buy groceries….) The graders managed to ignore that going every other week for the same distance might just be an improvement. Also, “department store” is fuzzy. Tractor Supply Company probably counts as one, as does Fred Meyer here in Oregon. If the first example, going to one place for your tractor parts, chicken feed, a salt block and a new shirt might be an improvement. In the second, getting pillow cases along with groceries also counts. It’s at least one fewer cashier who’s exposed to my masked face.

“But remember that people are spread out here [Wyoming]. We only have about five people per square mile. We have been socially distancing the entire 130 years that we have been a state,” Barrasso said.

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Wyoming, one state that has private exits from freeways, for Ranches!!! Highway exits are to be expected, I mean that is just the ranch driveway. Although usually private property doesn’t have 3 or 4 driveways off the highway.

Oregon has big swatches of emptiness too, but land is generally designated BLM, USFS, or State, and generally doesn’t have it’s own freeway off ramp. Highways are different, just random roads taking off into the trees, that may/may not be blocked.

It’s also the only state (that I know of–Cali to Ohio) that has railroad crossing style gates to close portions of I-80 when winter storms make a section impassible.

OTOH, the most desolate section of road I’ve been on is the 150 miles of OR/NV 140 between Lakeview, OR and US-95 north of Winnemucca, NV. There *might* be gasoline available at Denio Junction, but it’s got a bunch of nuthin’, plus some large ranches, reeeeeaaaaaly far apart.

Had a buddy from Wyoming. We joked about a midnight run up to L.L. Beans from Worcester (about a 2 hr run if you pushed it and avoided Smokey the bear). He thought we were pikers, school shopping for him had been an all day affair with about a 3.5 hr run (each way) to Cody.

Living 10 miles north of Iowa as I do, and in the county in Minnesota with the highest infection rate outside the Twin Cities metro and Rochester (and higher than two metro counties!), we’ve had 34 cases and 4 deaths.

*yawn*

I really wish our governor was as sensible as Iowa’s. But no, he’s a Democrat.

I swear, the next time someone tells me to listen to an expert and do something profoundly not in my or anyone I love’s interests because his computer models say we’re all going to die if we don’t, I’l going to pull out an AR-15 pistol, slap a full magazine in, and blow his ass to hell.

The modeling results are starting to get worse. We’ve all heard about co-morbidities but it turns out that this is seemingly based on the proportion of people ending up in ICUs who have them. It turns out, in Italy at least, that the proportion of people with, say, diabetes or hypertension In ICUs is very similar to the proportion of people in the population with these conditions. I’m now frantically digging for data but am reminded that doctors are not statisticians.

This actually makes no sense but, If true, changes the whole stay in your house if you’re fat thing that seems to be floating around. It also highlights the danger of biased samples.

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Such as basing their models on a sample group consisting of only the sickest 2% or 3% and then pretending they apply to everybody.

I knew more than that about statistics in the 8th grade. Of course I went to high school before Jimmy Carter’s Department Of Education spent TWO TRILLION dollars ‘improving’ public schools.
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“Camelot!”
“Camelot!”
“Camelot!”
“It’s only a model.”
“Shhhhh!”

Other than Biden, what do they have left? I would actually watch a debate between Trump and Slow Joe. The bloopers would be, ‘every time Joey opened his pie-hole’.

Almost 330 million people, and this is what we get? We could do better picking at random. Hell, we could do better picking at random in a mental hospital.
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When someone does a foolish thing, you should say it is a foolish thing. They may still continue to do it, but at least the truth is where it needs to be.

I had that discussion with my sister about Hillary. Figure there are 100 million ish women in the US who fit the constitutional requirement to be President. If it had to be a woman, even a one in a million woman, surely we could do better than Hillary. never got an answer, just a humph.

Hillary IS one in a million, just from the wrong end of the distribution. There couldn’t be another hundred that bad, could there?

Bernie Madoff was one in a million, too.
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They got a building down in New York City called Whitehall Street where ya go and get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and seeee-lected.

Aye. I saw that as a .sig some time back and, well, it was memorable. In the sense of “Yes, of course… but that is a good reminder.” Especially since, at the time, I was generally dealing with folks at least towards the center and a good many to the right. Now? Well (note: if you are HERE, this almost certainly does NOT apply to you) it’s been noted that the usual cusses aren’t nearly as.. fervent.. as “Humans!”

Her name was Tulsi Gabbard. I may not agree with Gabbard’s politics, and I might view her as nearly as big of a disaster as most of the other candidates. But unlike nearly everyone else running (there were one or two others, iirc, though they didn’t stay in as long as she did), she had an awareness that running to the hard left is not going to get you into the White House.

And so she got slammed nearly from start to finish. It started when Google “accidentally” had an algorithm that detected attempts to follow Google ads to her website after the first debate as spam clicks. And it continued with accusations (by Hillary, no less) that she was a Russian stooge, and constant *blatant* rewriting of the rules by the DNC to keep her out of the debates. If the Dems were smart, then the reason that they were doing that was to save her for 2024, when Trump was on his way out. But they’re not that smart. They just really didn’t want someone not spouting all of the hard left lines to get noticed.

I can’t remember the name of the thing but it’s the reaction people have to something that’s very close to natural but not quite, like a good but not perfect robot. Not uncanny, that’s different. Or if you ever meet a psychopath, I’ve spent 37 Years working in Wall Street so I’ve met a few. I get that feeling when I look at most of the politicians. Adam Schiff is a bad android.

I looked at Gabbard and saw a person and knew there was no freakin way she’d ever advance. All the rest of them were just empty suits spouting BS. Warren disappointed me because there was once something there and now it’s gone. Newsom has the android thing going. Cuomo is a person, the problem is he’s a corrupt N.Y. pol. I know people who know Booker and they tell me he’s actually a good guy but he’s too ambitious and easily led. Harris is another psychopath.

I think what they’re doing to Biden is cruel. if we ever see him in public again, watch how his wife turns him when he has an episode. My wife works with hospice patients and that’s the way they handle them when they get confused, then angry.

The thing that makes Gabbard particularly noteworthy is how blatantly and willing to go out of their way the DNC was in order to shut Gabbard out of the debates. There are always people that don’t really have a realistic chance. But so long as they follow the rules and meet the requirements, you let them on the stage. With Gabbard, the DNC was quite literally rewriting the rules in order to keep her out, and it was as plain as the nose on your face to anyone who was paying attention. Speculation is that it was payback by the powers that be after she exposed Harris as a massive hypocrite during the second (I think) debate, and pretty much single-handedly killed Harris’s campaign.

Science of Identity Foundation, and Medicare for All. Short answers to the question of “why not Tulsi Gabbard for President ?”

Why do you suppose that Bernie tried for the Dem party nomination? Because ~40% of the population would vote for Cthulhu if there was a (D) behind the name. Tulsi is personable, so it wouldn’t take much more to get her elected.

Her policies and philosophy are terrible, so the attitude that says she’s cute and been discriminated against should give her the D nomination is asking for trouble.

The last time I saw that attitude we wound up with a crypto-Muslim America-hating Chicago pol running the country.

The speculation I’ve seen is that the uncanny valley comes from the fact that things are real enough to say REAL to our Fore brains, but are missing something subtle. That missing something makes our lizard brains say “It’s DEAD run for it!”. that unpleasant tension is the uncanny valley.

If there wasn’t something that trips when the crazy person explains, with complete sincerity that you need to die, then the crazies would have cut a significant swath through the population. If there isn’t some tendency to cooperate, you don’t get a functioning social group. But if that tendency to cooperate has no limits, huge vulnerability.

We flat out don’t have the option of simply evolving the quality of not having crazies. Human minds are too complex, too many elements to break, and the most significant ones may well not involve genetics.

So, and I think my reasoning may be sound, we definitely need some tendency that adds up the various subtle traits, and gives us a checksum or two.

I think the functional purpose is a dead person implies SOMETHING killed the dead person. Not being where there is a potential predator or lethal disease is evolutionary a BAD thing. so our lizard brain flee response kicks in. I doubt many of our distant ancestors got to die of old age.

If they’re dead, yes– but in spite of saying things like “dead eyes,” the crazies don’t actually look dead.

*poking at it, combined with Bob’s predatory body language thing* It’s like they see us, and aren’t seeing a person when they do, kind of. But not quite the same as the folks who are seriously out of it and don’t seem to be human– I was about to type “wolves on two legs,” but that feels more like how those not-quite-rights feel.

ooooh that’s an interesting one. Most of the explanations I know of for the uncanny valley come from SIGGRAPH discussions back in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. In the 20 years since then it has become MUCH more clear that there were many hominids extant at the same time so your solution seems like a good one and not one that would be considered without the multiple hominid issue.

With the revelations that folks of European descent have Neanderthal DNA, and Asians have Denisovan DNA, it’s clear that ‘KILL IT!’ wasn’t always our ancestors’ first impulse…
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Sanity is like most things — best practiced in moderation.

RUN! might have been the first response, but then “hey, there aren’t any unattached women in my band, and we don’t have any sheep because we haven’t invented herding yet, but there’s that alien chick in the camp over the hill…” would kick in later.

Also, more grimly, it’s entirely likely that KILL ALL THE MALES, TAKE ALL THE FEMALES was the order of the day. Not like we haven’t seen that in modern human-on-human conflicts. The females in question being aliens wouldn’t be that much of a block.

At this point, I’m wondering if the fact that she ran a sane campaign, preparing her political career for events years into the future, is a sign that she was a Chinese asset recruited from within the officer corps.

She was also pretty, fit, successful, and upbeat. I have a couple colleagues who will sometimes chat very generally about politics. On the lines of “what do you think of so-and-so’s chances?” Local ballot measures, that kind of thing. In one such: ” who do you think could beat Trump? ” I replied , “Tulsi Gabard. She’s got Hillary’s politics ( she agreed) without any of her baggage. The U.S.A. could finally get the female president Democrat s want.”

The 40-ish, single-mom, just-got-dumped-by-her-recent-boyfriend got a look like she was sucking a lemon. “I just don’t like her.”

I changed the subject.

(N.B. I went Democrat in the primary to have some fun. My husband; Republican. I hand-delivered both to the same drop -box outside the police pecinct. Guess whose ballot got rejected because the signature “didn’t match”.?)

I think he realized that he was dealing with androids yesterday when they asked him why we couldn’t just wait six months for the science and he said people are dying now. it’s really a strange feeling if you’ve ever had It. you’re lucky if you haven’t. You’re talking to someone who looks human and sounds human but they’re not entirely, something’s missing. And it’s not spectrum, I know what that looks and sounds like and that’s not it.

Also posting in what used to be called the “Valley of the Heart’s desire/delight”, grew up in Berkeley when Republicans ran the east bay. Never post under my own name, worked for and against government all my life, so must keep my secret identity.

The retirement job involves data collection. Still have a job, but no hours, well, about one hour a week to log in the computer, to update software. When the “plane” lifts off, so will work. Filed for unemployment along with that million people. So many in the same position. If this does not last too long, the job will still be there.
Have a friend who is a contractor. He laid all his men off when they shut down construction. He is in the process of using the business “loan” program to rehire everyone, and will pay them to sit home, until they can go back to work. A lot of small businesses will do that.

The models are a crock. To get the actual number of those infected, multiply by 10 or 20. So far only those sick are being tested. They ignore mild cases. This was the official Kaiser email on April 1,2020:
” Remember, you don’t need to be tested if you aren’t showing symptoms
We’re prepared to test patients for COVID-19 if they meet the guidelines set out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and your local public health agency. Testing isn’t recommended for people with mild or moderate symptoms, and you don’t need to be tested if you aren’t showing symptoms. COVID-19 tests are only available when medically necessary, so please don’t come into a Kaiser Permanente facility for testing unless a doctor refers you”

So multiply confirmed cases by 10 or 20 and you get to the range of bad flu, not true pandemic. We will soon see the truth.

My suspicion is that the left saw how successful crashing the economy was in 2008, and they tried again. Their problem is that flulike diseases have a cycle. The number of pneumonia deaths reverts to 3K a week every summer, so they had to pull this prior to summer in order to crash the economy. That is why they are trying to use the fake charts to pretend deaths will increase until August, to keep things shut down, but warm weather will defeat them.

Every month, about 21,600 people in California die of SOMETHING. They’re putting a million people out of work because that rate MIGHT increase by 8%.

The company I work for is closed this week. If I’m lucky, I’ll get paid tomorrow for the two days I worked last week. If we’re REAL lucky, we’ll get the parts we need from China while the company is still afloat.

Thank you for all you’ve done, Mein Fuhrer Gavin.
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A politician is worse than a toilet. They’re both full of shit — but at least you can flush the toilet.

oh, he was willing to kill the entire film business in CA just to go after a few Uber drivers who ‘aren’t paying their share of the taxes’, so why do you think he isn’t willing to crash the remainder of the CA economy just to grab a little bit more power?

I have a cousin who’s like that. That was the first time I’d encountered it. I got sucked in for a couple years, as did my dad (long-lost niece). But, finally, my brother, husband, and I figured it out. Sadly, my father died a week after we kicked her to the curb. The stress of dealing with her and with my Alzheimer’s mother gave him a heart attack.

Fast forward to this January and a student accused me and my co-faculty advisor that while on a trip to Belgium we had not intervened in a raaaacist moment that traumatized her on Day 2 of a 10 day trip. The accusation came 3 weeks after we arrived home, 2 weeks after the start of the semester, and dragged on for six weeks. When we finally met with her (along with the diversity dean, our dean, and her parents) I realized that both she and her father were sociopaths/androids. Her opening words were “I just want to say, I have nothing to gain from this.” My radar pinged like mad. My colleague agreed with me; the diversity dean was reluctant to say anything, but I think she agreed. Our dean is a spineless wimp and never defended us.

I am now fully cognizant of what an android from Uncanny Valley looks, acts, and sounds like.

You mean “worry about whomever Joe picks as the next President” Assuming, of course, he somehow keeps it together long enough and doesn’t die from the stress of the campaign trail. Being POTUS ages a person. Ol’ Joe ain’t got room to age like that. He’s even admitted in an interview that his criteria for a VP pick is that the person be ready to take over as POTUS.

I doubt it would be anything as dramatic as that. I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy to get _____ into office, or anything like that. What I’m saying is that being POTUS really takes it’s toll, and Ol’ Joe isn’t exactly Mr. Young and Healthy. He has already admitted that he only intends/expects to be able to serve one term, and that he might not be able to finish that term for health reasons. I think that if he’s elected, he’ll try to serve that term, but he’s already talking about making sure his VP pick is someone who CAN step in if need be.

Take a good look at Biden today vs a picture of him a year ago. he has the “skull” thing that dying people get. I don’t think he’s well physically or mentally so his VP pic would be of more consequence than most.

Let them pick Stacy Abrams. Trump would destroy her. Her only experience is 4 years in a state House of Rep. and bawling to the press because she lost her last election. Although, I highly doubt Biden would pick her. There are too many other, more qualified candidates that would… you know… actually be an asset to his campaign. She hasn’t even proven that she could reliably give him GA; and what, if any, appeal would she have outside of GA where she’s likely just as well known as a sore-loser than for anything she’s done.

Let’s see, African American, minor state rep. The Dem’s already did that with a dude who’s only additional qualification was 2 years as a junior do nothing Senator. He won due to extremely nice pants creases (and lame-o opponents but mostly lame-o opponents). She’s also female and physically large so she checks off two more oppressed groups Woo-Hoo. Sadly as has been attributed to H.L Mencken “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public” so there is some chance of the population might just go for it.

Why do I get the feeling that the same people who were clutching their pearls in horror over the idea that someone as inexperienced as Sarah Palin, who had only been governor of the geographically largest state, being a heartbeat away from the presidency, would have absolutely no issue with Stacey Abrams being in the same position?

You mean the same people who were “concerned” about Sarah Palin – who was the only one of the four on the two major tickets who had executive experience – being at the bottom of the Republican ticket, but mocked the idea that anyone should be concerned that the top of the Dem ticket in that race had almost no experience?

Just FYI, my wife bought a new phone last year; a Samsung smartphone. It came tick-full of garbageware, including apps for Twitter, Facebook, and some other “social media”. Twitter and Facebook can’t be deleted, and “disable” only turns them off until the next “update”, which happens every few days.

*Somebody* really wants the population hooked on Twitter and Facebook…

Kamala Harris recently formed a joint fundraising committee with the DNC – typically something only the nominee does. That would be a great choice: the left hates her, and she’s too fr left for the moderates (all three of them) to put up with.

Boris Johnson is improving and sitting up in bed, huzzah. Let’s hope it continues. He’s no conservative but we need him.

Trump is not a philosophical conservative but he has conservative instincts since he’s not an ideologue. You have to be either be a psychopath or be educated into leftist dogma to be a progressive.

Being a progressive fellow traveler is easy, just be a conformist and a rat. Some stupid woman was loading her car with groceries and yelled at number two son for not social distancing. He asked was he supposed to walk in traffic. Sigh.

I still await some couple (traditional, yet.. man & woman) to be harassed by Der Officials about keeping apart, telling them they’re husband & wife and live closely together, only to get told again to spread out (cue Three Stooges scene…) and respond by deeply kissing and replying, “Any other insanely stupid ideas you lot have?” Ideally with an onlooker recording to make Der Officials the laughingstock they deserve to be.

Our county public health creature had something like that in the county update. To wit, people in the same household should a) keep sick people separated (oops, good idea, but by the time I knew I was ill, I’d already infected $SPOUSE), and b) should keep 6′ separation within the house even for well people. (What in blue-blazing hell is she smoking? Under normal circumstances, we’re both preparing dinner, and we don’t have *that* big of a kitchen.

That gem of instruction might still be somewhere in the website, but I suspect it got so much blowback the writer got a bit of a talking to.

The only time we really kept 6′ away was when we were both quite ill and used separate bedrooms and baths.

The only response that keeps the distancing idea that I can think of is, “Yes, *I* know that, and *you* two know that, but none of wants to deal with ‘Karen’ who REFUSES to know that. It’s just for show, and I wish this nonsense were over, too.”

In Colorado, a man was playing with his six-year-old daughter in a park with no one else within a vast distance, when he was arrested by a group of police officers–wrongly, based on signs at the park–who themselves failed to follow guidelines as to use of masks, gloves, and social distancing.

WTF? If that child falls and scrapes a knee her Dad is supposed to stand six feet away? And why do those !@#$% cops get to violate Public Health protocols? Can they be sued for endangering the little girl?

For that matter, how do parents change nappies while maintaining a six-foot distance? Seems it might make breast-feeding a challenge.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.
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I do not like Santiago. I’ve always thought that a leader should have a strong chin. He has no chin, and his vice-president has several. This to me is not a good combination.

As certain states crank the ratchet ever tighter,
As the mountains of dead in the streets continue to fail to appear,
As the ironclad predictions of certain doom become ever more fluid and malleable,
The yearning for freedom becomes ever more clear.

Certain countries (China, and other socialist/communist 4th world pits of Hades) may have all of the above ailments. But the solutions being bandied about aren’t saving them. Lockdowns in the tenements only ensure the whole building gets the disease. Welding them in to prevent spread only ensures their deaths, if not from sickness then from starvation. And death by bullet for daring to venture out is no nobler a death than by disease, albeit oftimes far faster.
There is a rumbling afoot. A beginning to study what freedoms are enshrined in our Constitution, and protected by force of arms in the hands of our populace. A whispering, a muttering, and a screaming.
And there is backlash building. A reading and researching of what a Constitutionally guaranteed right is, what are violations of rights under color of law, what does “unlawful taking” mean, and how it applies to forced closures, what exactly IS “freedom of assembly” and how it relates to the right to travel.
The severity and duration of that backlash is wholly dependent upon those currently in power and abusing the same. But if they keep cranking that ratchet, eventually the spring will break, and unleash all at once.
I pray for peace, that the retaliation and revolt will be limited to holding those governors, mayors, and uniformed personnel that enact and enforce unconstitutional edicts accountable, and throwing them in jail for the rest of their miserable lives. But I also pray for those uniformed personnel that they remember and uphold the oaths of office they took, which I also once took once upon a time.
“I, (name), do solemnly swear to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States…”
It will get better, folks. But it could go extremely sideways before then.
I await, from my soap box, the solutions from ballot and jury boxes, and pray to God we never have to open that last box.

Forget about jailing them. For that there would have to be uncorrupted people in the justice system. The most we can hope for is that the lynchings are limited to them and do not go full French Revolution.

1. Condemn what Trump, ie. the government, has done and then use that as proof that

2. We need more government.

If they wanted this as proof of how important the government is, they would have lined up behind Trump to rubber stamp whatever he wants. In going “reeeee” to everything Trump does, even when that means reversing 180 their positions in under 21 days as need, they are only undermining the idea that it is the government that gets us through that.

The amount of fun “how to survive quarantine” material on the web has probably done more to get people through this than anything a government has done. People notice that, even if they can’t articulate it.

As observed in the comments by this guy, the media want it both ways. They want to be able to yell at Trump if he “isn’t acting fast enough, AND when they think he is going too fast.” Ultimately they want him to fail.

And he isn’t obliging. Which is the ‘greatest atrocity ever’, in their pampered, cushy existence.

I wonder, honestly, if these guys were given the option of choosing whether family and friends would die, versus the abstract faceless mass of strangers, their spouses, parents, children facing them with Death herself standing there with the scythe poised to strike their loved ones down… whether they’d say “kill them, than Trump being re-elected!” Or would they choose their loved ones’ lives.

If it’d let them hammer Orange Man or your current PM, they’d make it, in far too many cases.
Yes, I think that lowly of the scum
They would also say nothing if said choice was criticizing someone like 0bama or sHrillary or allowing far higher risk to their family/friends

My favorite was Politico noticing this is the perfect opening for an authoritarian to take advantage of and that Trump isn’t. Their “logical” conclusion was not that they were wrong to claim Trump is authoritarian, but that he is, but incompetent, and thus an authoritarian weakman instead of an authoritarian strongman.

Here in Ohio, they finally admitted that we’re doing tons better than their models, but they still want us locked down until at least the end of April. But not in a way that says really the end of April.

Arrrrrrgh. And we don’t even have as strict of conditions as other places. Getting tired of it.

WCPO reporter whined about how crowds of people standing butt to butt were getting dispersed in Over the Rhine (slum/bar/renovation district in Cincy), but people sitting at distances in a church amphitheater were allowed to attend the evangelical church over by the highway.

What a jerk. DeWine just told him they’re not going to order any church closures, on freedom of religion grounds, although he guilted everybody about going.

Sounds like time to write a letter to the WCPO news manager, station manager, general manager, explaining certain facts … such as why you are encouraging friends and family to not watch their “news” broadcast.

Our slower even than Gov’t, management here at work has decided to try to take everyone’s temp before letting them on campus come Friday (less workers Friday), and some of the rules are going to be fun once I show up.
If you have >=100 you get sent home for 2 weeks.
Temp taken while in your vehicle.
Vehicle must be at room temp, and if not you wait in special area until it is.
I am riding my motorcycle.
But, if I was in my truck it’d take a long while to reach their stupid temp as it will be a bit below freezing Friday AM.
Across town, where they almost closed this past December into January as folks were very sick with flu like symptoms, there are people who ride bicycles to work every day due to not having a DL from getting DWI’s
I don’t know if we have any this side of town, as I am not near the other buildings at all.

Might want to get a better thermometer.
Hypothermia is defined as a body core temperature below 35.0 °C (95.0 °F) in humans.
Now by mouth is not core, but there is a procedure that fairly accurately does check your core temp.
Needs a dedicated tool, and a very good friend or long arms though.

millions and millions of Americans are calmly sitting at home trying to be good citizens and not freak out their liberal neighbors by … you know … GOING OUT OF THEIR HOUSE … are cleaning their guns … and checking their ammo supply …

keep poking that tiger thru the cage bars … bars made of the good will of citizens trying to be law(ish) abiding citizens … (law(ish) since none of the lock downs are actually, you know, strictly legal)

Too many people say, proudly, “I believe in SCIENCE,” while sneering at people of faith. I sometimes ask which denomination of Science they follow – are they members of the sect of Climatologists, or Meteorologists?

The few times in when my life when I believe that God has directly spoken to me, what He has said is roughly, “Oh, will you quit your whining? I’ve rained down innumerable blessings on your head, and all you can seem to do is run and hide and cry when one tiny thing doesn’t go your way!”

Caldo de mariscos. If you ever meet us in person (We’re going so crazy we’re thinking when kids are off paycheck, we might make impromptu drop-ins in various cities where Huns live.) ask Dan about missing our wedding dinner (long story) and my mom’s FAMOUS caldo de mariscos. 😀

Just remember a few important details:
One: the universe is designed for free will, and life.
Two: God’s perfect plan requires us imperfect people.
Three: God loved us enough to die for us. (Good Friday)
Four: Christianity requires both cross and empty tomb. (Easter)
Five: Quantum mechanics is paradoxic.
Six: God is fond of sending people on strange journeys.

Who is your widow?(1 Kings 17:9)
What will you do when your brook dries up? (1 Kings 17:7)
When will you know your future?
Where will your journey take you?
Why are you here?
How do you know?

Whenever I feel discouraged, I ask myself:
Am I better off than either Elijah or the widow?
So far the answer is yes.

Assuming hospitalization & intubation rates continue to fall, it’s nearly certain that the President will try to open up most things by the end of this month no matter what Fauci says, while still encouraging sensible precautions.
The problem will be the Governors. You know that there are those who will Resist! and call him a murderer for advocating we head back toward normal behaviors. I’m somewhat hopeful here in Florida with DeSantis, but worried for NY, CA, CO and a few others.

Might not be a good assumption. With normal business in the tank, hospitals *need* those hospitalizations and intubations to keep maying payroll. Having long experience with aggressive testing and billing, I expect they’ll keep doing the Corona shuffle as long as it remains billable.

However, I still say the biggest problems will be lawyers and insurance companies. The lawyers will be happy to sue any business that re-opens if their employees get sick afterwards. Or if they hire replacement employees to fill the positions their original employees won’t come back to. Or if any of their customers get sick and want to sue.

The insurance companies will only contribute. I’m already seeing stories about doctors who want to re-open their practices, but are being advised that their insurance will not cover them if any of their patients claim they contracted WuhanFlu after a visit to the doctor’s office. I’m sure we’ll see that in other sectors.

And despite some comments I’ve seen about doctors “firing their insurance companies”, doctors have to have that coverage, and when none of the insurance companies will offer it at reasonable rates unless the doctors follow their rules on a hundred things, you end up with doctors (and businesses) going along.

It occurs to me that the same geniuses that are requiring double blind long term statistical studies of Plaquenil because SCIENCE are accepting the results of a series of WAG’s that don’t stand any scrutiny at all in models because SCIENCE. I’m looking at you Dr. Fauci, and you governors.

Actually, in addition to being a logistical speed-up so the legionary detail can head back to their barracks and clean their gear, the stabby bit was also seen as a mercy, as dying by suffocation when your legs give out after however many days you’ve lasted nailed up there is very much a nasty way to go.

For most of them (I have quite a few friends), I’d just like a tour of actual communist countries at actual citizen-serf levels. Multiple ones just to hammer down the point. Leave ’em there for a month if they’re still arguing.

While I’ve conducted only a casual motion-study analysis of the two methods, it suggests that impalement is the more efficient process, enabling more “beneficiaries” be processed in less time and with fewer workers per beneficiary. It is probably easier to mechanize parts of the impalement process, although use of a nail gun for mounting people to the crucifix might reduce processing time for that procedure.

Some minor experimentation with each procedure might prove useful in determining ways of reducing needless steps as well as offering insights into optimum sequencing of actions. For example, with impalement is it better to erect the stakes and use a derrick to lower the beneficiary or should preliminary insertion be accomplished before raising the stake and placing it in its hole?

These are all considerations which must be resolved before putting the projects out for bids.
–

Arghhh. My county decided to close several of the parks that people use most. And we’re not talking tiny parks. They closed the dog parks and the big canoeing park, instead of having the park folks ask people to spread out and use more of the smaller and less popular parks. (Of which we have tons, all over the place. There was a developer tax break at one point, so all kinds of little oddshaped lots got turned into parks for the county or the little cities and townships.)

Of course, since both these parks are close to the bike trails, people’s houses, etc., they aren’t going to be very effective at closing them, so it’s just dumb.

And since it’s spring, and people want to use the parks they fund while they’re stuck at home, I suspect that folks will be awfully salty, come the next park levy request.

The other dumb part is that the river that runs through the canoeing park is state property, so as long as people don’t launch or land their canoes until they hit private property, there’s not a dang thing the county can do.

I wonder what effect a city*-wide tax strike might have? Set up an escrow account for people to pay their taxes into but no disbursement to the city until certain reasonable conditions get met. I am sure a newly past the bar** lawyer could draw up a suitable trust*** agreement.

*county-wide, state-wide, I don’t give a [expleted].

**none of this year’s current crop of Harvard Law third-years need apply

***Test case in a venue with a Trump-appointed judge; a Posnerian judge would revoke it on principle (that principle being that the People are not allowed to infringe the powers of their rulers.
–

Uniformed thugs will remove you from your property, and bureaucrats will perform the magic that turns your property into the property of the State. Any objections you have will be dismissed by their courts.

Seemed appropriate to post this old poem, which has been abused by some nutcases, but has its value. We Americans aren’t Saxons, but our culture descends at least in part from them, as well as our natural character.

THE WRATH OF THE AWAKENED SAXON
by Rudyard Kipling

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.

They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.

Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.

It was not suddenly bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.

Except you’re using the version the nutbars altered.
It’s the ENGLISH, not the Saxon.
And btw, we are English by culture, and follow English-government pattern. Including periodic blood lettings.
Which is funny, because the English no longer do.

The Saxons were not exactly coolheaded. You could argue Hengest and Horsa, but otherwise they were your typical Bronze Age hotheads with iron/steel weapons. Christianity was what started cooling them off.

The SDB in that is for the late Steve DenBeste. The man had an effect on some of my life choices.

I read that essay many years ago, and it has shaped me profoundly.

I identify as inclined to Hamiltonianism and Jacksonism, but am warped outside of the specification for the latter. a) I believe in anticipating the future, and hardening my heart to do in cold blood what I might otherwise find myself doing in anger. b) I get angry about stuff that your traditional Jacksonian is not aware of and does not care about.

There an insight into the four schools that I think Meade missed. There’s a core assumption to each school that involves extending what works in US cultures across international boundaries to other, wildly different, cultures. Each of those assumptions has aspects that flat out are not valid for all cultures and populations.

Oh, forgot in my other post: I have it on good FOAF authority that Trump was a master of VTC back in the day, to where it was a competitive advantage for his companies. So why have in-person press conferences during this?

Given that, and oh i don’t know, every other thing he has done in the last few years I think we can say pretty clearly that he is setting up the fools to be seen as such.

And bless their pea picking hearts, they are doing their level best to help him in that effort.
Somebody please explain to me just how it is that these so called media elites cannot remember that what they said two weeks ago remains as a permanent record. And BHO pretty much used up all the “you just don’t understand what I really meant” and “well, I’ve evolved my thinking since then” in the weasel worded explanation dodge basket.
A good many of us simply no longer give a lick of credence to such blather.

Uncle Lar, it’s because their audiences don’t remember what they said two weeks ago. I may be the only person left on facebook that has significant numbers of friends across the political spectrum, and my liberal friends just don’t remember.

My conservative friends seem to be doing their best to archive all the things, meanwhile.

Somebody please explain to me just how it is that these so called media elites cannot remember that what they said two weeks ago remains as a permanent record.

Same reason most of my relatives can’t remember that what they said X minutes/hours/days ago is still RIGHT FREAKING THERE on Facebook, when it’s the same conversation?

What scares me is how well it works in face to face conversation, and how I’ll still catch myself going something like “oh, yeah, I must have been wrong, they wouldn’t be so CONFIDENT if I wasn’t mist– wait, no, I freaking wasn’t!”

Because a whole lot of people – decent, intelligent, otherwise normal people – have a working memory span of about a week. Drop Eurasia from the news for a week, then tell them we’ve always been at war with Eastasia, and they’ll frown momentarily, see nobody else is saying anything, and then go along with the new Narrative.

I’ve worked with these people, for months and years at a time, and watched them change their stated opinions regularly, as the images from the TV directed them. And then not only deny what they said previously, but fly into irate rages if pressed.

That is NORMAL. They live in some kind of amorphous “now”, and they’ll defend what they perceive to be the status quo, no matter how recent or different from last weel’s status quo.

Since it makes them so angry to be challenged over it, they obviously know what they’re doing. But they persist anyway, from amused condescension to full-on Trigglypuff if you keep the pressure on.

*Twitch Twitch* A system fraught with strange and arcane operating requirements and that failed any time there was any moisture or lightning between thither and yon, thither being where my classroom was, yon being where the other half of the class was.

I’m fine with no end date, as long as we can instead discuss remedying the problem the other way: 1. Refurbishing the domestic mass transit plague pits to a standard that is fit for long term human habitation*. 2. Addressing the foreign security problem posed by alien populations and their various unclean habits.

Which, yes, is mostly repackaging my old tired opinions, and a poison pill I am sure no one is stupid enough to swallow**.

*I’ve a method to turn NYC into LA that I think might make the NY pols concede re: bitching about other states rather than see implemented. And it applies so widely as to include where I live now, so you could put the screws to lots of politicians.

Tell me again how our hospitals were on the verge of collapse. I’m starting to wonder if maybe the medical workers I know were all at the particularly slammed hospitals, and when it’s socially safe to do so other doctors and nurses will be telling us, “yeah, we never got more than we could handle at any time.”

I suspect that New York and other cities really did have a hard time, but that part of it was red tape, and part of it was healthcare workers getting sick early on, or having to stay home because of suspected exposure.

I mean, all the elaborate procedures, and all the PPE, had to take longer for everyone, and thus take up a lot of man-hours. (Which doesn’t mean they didn’t need them.) As time went on, people would get faster at the procedures and there would be more help.

My cousin is a nurse at one of the NYC public hospitals. I heard from her today. She said it was a mess mostly because there was little that could be done for the first wave of patients and the staff was very afraid of infection. You should also keep in mind that the mess was in the public hospitals and happens every year, much like Europe and socialized medicine anywhere.

The media also blew it up hugely, If I remember correctly the death count in the day they showed the body bags and refrigerated truck was 14. If one of the 14 was yours it’s a tragedy of course but all in a days work at Elmhurst Hospital I’m afraid.

These are the type of firsthand reports that are most valuable, much like the citizen-journalist videos plinks here a while back of the NYC Emergency entrances after the “war zone” reporting showing echoing silence, empty ED waiting areas, and parked and idle EMS transports.

Meanwhile, while the Democrats and their media arm keep calling Trump a Fascist dictator, Comrade Murphy is now ordering that all “non-essential” construction in New Jersey stop, including apparently any road work except emergency repairs. Never mind that road construction workers are outdoors and often wear masks and gloves to begin with for protection.

They should be expanding road work to take advantage of the much lower road traffic so that work can be done before traffic increases again. It will also at least part of the economy going.

What else is he going to decree to be non-essential? Murphy is intent on shutting down the entire economy and putting everyone under indefinite house arrest Venezuela style: The fact that the state has an emergency power law does not allow that law to be so broad, and actions taken under it so broad, as to violate the Constitution. If any decree is permitted under “emergency” laws, no matter what, than the Constitution is meaningless.

Using the rubric of emergency powers to issue daily bans of activities and “indefinite” house arrest is the hallmark of the very type of dictatorship that the Democrats and their media arm claim to be against. It is clear that they love dictatorships and rule by decree when it is being done by socialists.

I hope someone sues asap to put a reign on the ever accelerating dictatorship which now exists.

This note, excerpted from comments by National Review‘s Jim Geraghty, seems worthy of attention:

As of this writing, British prime minister Boris Johnson is “responding to treatment” in an intensive care unit in St. Thomas Hospital in London. We’re all hoping and praying he pulls through. Johnson is 55 years old, and had said recently that he wanted to lose some weight, but otherwise seemed to be in good health. He doesn’t smoke, although back in 2014 he joked that, like Winston Churchill, he could drink a lot at lunch and keep working.

I know people around here are itching to get out. Yesterday my landscaper showed up to mow the yard. He usually waits until I call him, and I usually wait until the grass gets somewhat taller. But he’s a man who needs to be doing useful things, and I think he was just getting nuts cooped up at home. So now I’ve got a freshly mowed yard, even if I probably would’ve let it go another week or two.

Between now and next spring, I need to figure out how to clearly distinguish the flower beds so they don’t get mowed down (oops!). If I can swing it, I’m thinking about crushed stone or pebbles with a boundary of small pavers. Then I just have the problem of keeping grass and weeds pulled.

Until stuff (e.g. leaves) falls on it and starts creating a dirt layer on top of the cloth. Look at any yard that has done this several years earlier. It doesn’t last without a lot of maintenance (or liberal applications of “kill it all!” spray).

the Indian place where i get my biryani once a week is out of the little three-chamber takeout trays.The restaurant supply place they use is out, and isn’t sure when they will get them back in. Wanna bet that styrafoam fast food containers aren’t an ‘essential business’?

I use this, of course, as an example of the stuff we can expect to run out on the fringes before stuff more noticeable starts to run out. I definitely don’t trust my governor (VA), the governor of CA, or the governor of NY, or any otehr state, with the ability to decide what is an “essential business” well enough to run a functioning economy that doesn’t end up with people starving next winter.

According to a certain manatee aficionado, there is a new anthology available with a story by the Beautiful yet Evil Space Princess™ in it. Is there a link to it whereby we may purchase it and credit some portion to our Hostess?

I do believe that something like this last point (emphasis added) has recently been mentioned by somebody here …

Do Ventilators Help?
During this COVID-19 crisis, the rate of ventilator usage increase has gone down and remains well below projections. A few days ago, Governor Cuomo passed a special order allowing the state to seize ventilators from upstate hospitals to bring them to the hotspots in the city. The next day, he said he no longer needed additional ventilators. This was strange from a man who seemed to be moving heaven and earth to get them anywhere he could, whether from China, or Elon Musk, or from a Ford Motor Company retooled by the Defense Production Act.

There seems to be a new reluctance against treating COVID-19 patients with ventilators. Part of it is that the process of intubation itself is traumatic for patients and requires major recovery time all on its own. It’s also dangerous for the doctors themselves. But part of it may be a counter-consensus about what the virus actually does. Instead of being a pneumonia that attacks the lungs, there are some doctors theorizing that the damage COVID-19 does is to the hemoglobin in the blood, at once disabling the ability of red blood cells to carry oxygen from the lungs to other organs, and releasing iron into the body, the oxidizing effect of this may cause those “ground glass” lung pictures scene in CT scans of patients.
–

In my not unlimited experience, doctors are among the groups least likely to seek help from their fellow professionals. Memories of seeing them drunk at professional conventions are probably among the least of their reasons.
–

He’s 75, and his opinion of the medical industry is even lower than mine. More than once he’s mentioned his greatest fear is getting sick and becoming trapped in “the machine.”

Going over my file together, for example, at least a quarter of the referrals or tests done were either the wrong thing or not done at all. He said that’s actually a pretty good percentage.

He said he’s going to keep at it until his health finally does, but at his age… I’ve been keeping an eye out for several years now, and there *aren’t* any GPs within fifty miles of here. Just “Primary Care Physicians”, which are f’ing useless when they’re just another two-week delay between getting sick and getting treatment.

Also, he’s almost the last of the locals who owns his own practice; PCPs are just employees around here. Hard to build a long-term relationship with a doc who is probably only going to work in your area for a few years.

Dr. Scott Jensen is both a physician and a Minnesota state senator. Yesterday he was interviewed by a local television station and dropped a bombshell: he, and presumably all other Minnesota doctors, got a seven-page letter from the Minnesota Department of Health that gave guidance on how to classify COVID-19 deaths. The letter said that if a patient died of, e.g., pneumonia, and was believed to have been exposed to COVID-19, the death certificate should say that COVID-19 was the cause of death even though the patient was never tested, or never tested positive, for that disease.

“We’re also talking about a tremendously revved-up allergy season if we don’t do these things [allow landscapers and yard work people to work] – if we just let the weeds and spring pollens go crazy we’re going to have a lot of kids with hay fever and asthma, and we know that the supply chain of asthmatic inhalers is potentially at risk.”

“The question is, why is Trump listening to them? Is he insane? Did they finally hit his weak spot (which appears to be his germophobia?) OR is he waiting for other countries to open and prove the mad doctor wrong?”

They’re waiting to see what happens to Sweden. The Swedes didn’t do anything, didn’t close anything. Another week or two, and everybody will find out what happens. If they don’t have a -huge- meltdown, the lockdown will be ended.

Also the Turks. That maniac Edrogan is arresting doctors who make public statements regarding the Wuhan Flu being a problem.

Meanwhile in the Demented Dominion the fucking media FINALLY discovered that fabric masks slow the spread of the virus. I know, hard to believe, but they did.

I can tell you from local experience out here in Hooterville that for a lot of people, this thing doesn’t have symptoms. No fever, no rash, no coughing, no sniffling, nothing. Others, KAPOW they go down like they were shot.

So really, what options are there? The good options were all off the table in December.

1) Everybody hide, aka social distancing. This is not working in places like NYC. Duh. Density too high, too many assholes who won’t play along. Closing everything is also not a long-term solution. I think end of April is about the limit. After that, people are going to say fuck it and get on with life, government be damned.

Two weeks later be when the second wave hits.

2) Do nothing. I have a bad feeling that isn’t going to work in Sweden. I hope it does, but ooh, damn dudes.

3) Everybody wears a mask to keep their damn germs to themselves, everybody follows the common sense hygiene rules, vulnerable populations like nursing homes and hospitals get TESTING as much and as often as possible. Open as much as possible while still maintaining hygiene. Libraries, factories, take-out restaurants, all that. Testing is the key to that.

Realistically, now that everyone with a brain had the shit scared out of them, #3 could work. We could do that. Eventually we will do it, because its the only option that will work. IMO, anyway.

In the mean time, enjoy watching the people in charge fuck it all up by the numbers. Keep a list of people you want to make sure never get another government job EVER again. Like Dr. Fauci.

After that, people are going to say fuck it and get on with life, government be damned.

I’ve been saying that for three weeks at least. “I got work to do, if I get it then I guess I get it.”

Two weeks later be when the second wave hits.

Barring a vaccine which we won’t have for a year at least if ever, the only way we’re going to get over this is to let people get out and get sick just enough so that the hospitals are full but not over-full and the staff is busy but not slammed. Yes, some people will die. That sucks for them and their families, but hopefully we have good enough treatments that there are very few of them, and — to compartmentalize, like adults do — the economic damage from loss of life will be far less than keeping the country closed for another 10 or 12 months.

I can tell you from local experience out here in Hooterville that for a lot of people, this thing doesn’t have symptoms. No fever, no rash, no coughing, no sniffling, nothing. Others, KAPOW they go down like they were shot.

Yep. This is why even if it turns out to be a fraction as lethal as the flu you will never catch me spouting off the flubro crap. It’s too weird to ever be called “just the flu”.

So really, what options are there? The good options were all off the table in December.

Well there are some options. While it is happening wall off the large cities and shoot anyone trying to escape to infect the rest of the country. Then when things have run their course forbid living in cities above X population density.

This may seem like a terrible broach of civil liberties, and it is. But the left (and lets face it most of the right) is overjoyed when they get a chance to have explosive diarrhea on the Constitution, so it will pass. Needs of the many and all that.

Yeah, I /know/ I haven’t gotten multiple possession up and running yet. Plus, you didn’t recite the practical difficulties of coercing compliance with such a law in tedious detail.

NYC being turned into ‘LA’, or at least a set of reasonable population density settlements could be done by moving a chunk of population at a time, quarantining them in concentration camps, then resettling them. Sanitize the camps in between groups, and then burn down the whole of NYC afterwards. If the disease issue is bad enough to violate civil rights, and cause misery, it is bad enough to violate civil rights and cause misery. Two deal breakers, each alone sufficient. a) The disease may be bad, but panic does not justify ill-thought remedies. If civil rights violations are licit, they need to be well thought and relevant, not the bullshit that I’m spouting, or that elected officials are doing. b) Forcible resettlement is stupid; there is pretty much no chance of producing to something viable to design. It’s basically an excuse to inflict hardship and suffering.

Now, taxing people and businesses in cities dense enough to have active mass transit is another matter. Probably no political will to do it, and maintain it. So it’d mostly be of value for trolling and for counter-proposals in legislature. And it is a little too plausible for trolling.

Now, now. Where would all you provincial folk dump your awkward sons and daughters if we weren’t around?

Can we dump the Whitney, most of the MOMA and all of the Guggenheim? All the hipster parts of Brooklyn? can we send all the actors, wanna be actors and other assorted waifs and strays from Podunk back to podunk?

Keep Natural History, that where they have the dinosaurs and a bunch of Teddy Roosevelt stuff. Oh and Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. That was paid for by laborers pennies and shouldn’t be wasted.

Historic and artistic works are obviously a potential visual vector for infection. Nothing but brutalist city planning in our technocratic wet dream resettlement camps.

Having anything but the stupidest possible (but theoretically perfect) reaction to a real world event would be unauthentic to our modern high academic culture.

If a little boy steps on a crack, all the mother’s backs will break, then we all die, so we need to burn off the legs from all the little boys.

In all seriousness, how things look matters very little to me, and I don’t travel, so the sights in some place I’ve never visited, and probably will never care to visit have pretty much zero importance to me. I could stand to be more into, say, civil engineering history, and then it might matter to me. But I haven’t yet acquired the taste.

So the range of things I am willing to do to be left alone with my books and other hobbies is quite wide. And there are aspects of the lockdown which I find increasingly difficult. In addition to the talking points on twitter, which I am excessively irritated by the framing of.

My books are largely an exploration of how a guy manages when he becomes the smartest monkey in history.

Mostly he stays home and plays with the dog, works on his truck, hangs out with his too-many robot girlfriends. Because everybody hates the smart monkey, right? Smartest monkey ever says don’t be that guy. Don’t look smart, look like a dumbass. Don’t solve problems, make it so the dumb monkeys think they solved them. Give the pushy important monkeys something shiny to chase, sit back and relax as they run around after it.

This is a novel solution I don’t recall ever seeing in SF/F. When given absolute power, do absolutely nothing. Who does that?

random person: “Isn’t it sad that people can’t fly through the air like birds?”
engineer: “Check out my new thingamabob! I call it an “aeroplane.”

random person: “Ordinary life is so *boring*.”
writer: “Um… gimme a minute, how about: ‘Fire roared through the bifurcated city of Ankh-Morpork. Where it licked the Wizards’ Quarter it burned blue and green and was even laced with strange sparks of the eighth color, octarine; where its outriders found their way into the vats and oil stores all along Merchant Street it progressed in a series of blazing fountains and explosions; in the streets of the perfume blenders it burned with a sweetness; where it touched bundles of rare and dry herbs in the storerooms of the drugmasters it made men go mad and talk to God.'”

random person: “The living room would really be set off by a painting of Elvis done on black velvet.”
artist: “If you look at this blobby watercolor just right, it might be Elvis.”

Ian Bruene, thanks for that link. It was very good reading, and put some of the “WTF are these people thinking and why” into perspective.
The WuFlu, and the varying .gov responses to it, bother me on many levels.
With the constant progressive attacks on Trump, America, and our Constitution over the past three years, it is hard for me not to see “enemy action” in either the disease, or in the draconian responses.
The Chinese governments, from the Sung Dynasty to today, have a long hisory of not caring how many of their people die, if their goals are accomplished.
I can not shake the idea that just as the Chinese economy was being pushed down by trade restrictions, that there comes coincidentally, from China, a viral plague that craters the economies of all of their trading partners.
I don’t like coinkydinks.
Another problem I have is with the rapidity that the Progressives came out with their attacks. I am sure that there are Prog think tanks doing nothing but programming narratives and designing plans of action in case something bad happens to us, as shown by the rapidity abd viciousness of the anti gun attacks after the Florida high school shooting, but the level of coordination on that side makes me think that it may take a sterilization by fire for America to recover from these people.
The medias’ lies and panic-mongering are wearing thin. We need to get out of our jail cells and back to work before the recession this lockdown has caused turns into a depression lasting years.
Work through it as best we can, and be the survivors.
John